Twitter: Traffic and Engagement Accelerated in January, Says Goldman

By Tiernan Ray

Goldman Sachs’s Internet analyst Heath Terry, who has a Buy rating on shares of Twitter (TWTR), and a $69 price target, today reviews data that came out yesterday from comScore that suggest some of the important metrics for traffic on the service picked up the pace in January.

Terry sees both overall traffic and time spent on Twitter having sped up in January:

comScore released US mobile internet traffic for January. Twitter reached 42.9mn monthly unique visitors in January, up +40% yoy, an acceleration from +30% in December and the 4Q average of +31%. For reference, the 4Q comScore monthly mobile uniques was 38.3mn on average, which compares to Twitter’s disclosed 54.0mn monthly active users in the US in 4Q, of which 76% of users accessed from a mobile device […] Mobile time spent on Twitter also accelerated in January according to comScore, reaching 8.4bn total minutes, growing +108% yoy, compared to +75% in December and the 4Q average growth of +69%. This translates into 196 minutes on average per unique visitor over the month, growing +48% compared to +34% yoy growth in December and 4Q average growth of +29%.

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Tech Trader Daily is a blog on technology investing written by Barron’s veteran Tiernan Ray. The blog provides news, analysis and original reporting on events important to investors in software, hardware, the Internet, telecommunications and related fields. Comments and tips can be sent to: techtraderdaily@barrons.com.